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THE LEDGER INDEPENDENT TUESDAY, 02.28.2012 | A9THE LEDGER INDEPENDENT | TUESDAY, 02.28.2012 SPORTS | A9

BRIAN MAHONEYAssociated Press

ORLANDO, Fla. | Kevin Durant says it’s too early to think about a poten-tial Heat-Thunder NBA finals.

It seems hard to ignore at the season’s midpoint.

The teams share the league’s best record and both rolled into the All-Star break.

With Durant and Rus-sell Westbrook on one side and LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh looking to avenge their finals disappoint-ment, the series could be a thriller.

But Chicago is right on Miami’s heels in the East, and a number of con-tenders could emerge for the Thunder out West.

The second half opens Tuesday, and the other big story is Dwight How-ard’s situation.

Orlando has to decide by the March 15 deadline if it will keep or trade its

franchise center.LeBron James and the

Heat burn for a second chance. Kevin Durant and the Thunder are storming toward their first oppor-tunity.

An NBA finals matchup is easy to picture.

Durant isn’t looking.“It’s too early for that,”

the All-Star game MVP said.

“We’re trying to take it a game at a time, a day at a time. I know in Oklaho-ma City, we look forward to getting better every day, and we’ll see what happens.”

If the All-Star game was an indication, the se-ries would be a thriller.

Durant and Thunder teammate Russell West-brook helped shoot the West to a big lead.

James and Dwyane Wade almost brought the East all the way back before James’ turnover in the final seconds allowed the West to escape with a 152-149 victory.

Are Heat and Thunder in NBA’s June forecast?

NASCARFROM A7

NASCAR officials were examining the track surface to determine whether the race could continue.

Jet fuel poured down the surface of Turn 3 at Day-tona International Speed-way, creating a fiery lasting image of NASCAR’s biggest race of the year.

It was par for the course for this Daytona 500, which was postponed for the first time in NASCAR’s 54-year history because of steady rain all day Sunday at the track. NASCAR initially planned to restart the race at noon Monday, but per-sistent rain forced series officials to make an early decision to hold off until 7 p.m.

Fox stayed with its plans to broadcast the 500, mak-ing it the first ever NASCAR race shown in primetime and an opportunity to fea-ture the elite Sprint Cup Series. Carl Edwards, who fell just short of winning the title last season, started from the pole with cham-pion Tony Stewart, seeking to snap an 0-for-13 losing streak in the Daytona 500,

right behind him.Danica Patrick, mak-

ing the full-time move to NASCAR from IndyCar, was making her Daytona 500 debut.

Those storylines, how-ever, were quickly forgotten in this bizarre 55th running of NASCAR’s version of the Super Bowl.

It took several minutes for safety workers to put out the fire, and then came the task of removing the truck from the track and cleaning up all that spilled fuel.

Towing the truck from the steep banking present-ed a challenge, as NASCAR was nervous any movement would dig into the track surface.

The drivers were allowed to exit their cars after about 10 minutes under the red flag.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. had been complaining he had to go to the bathroom, and Brad Keselowski was post-ing to his Twitter account from inside his car.

Blaney did not get out of his car, and Jamie McMur-ray, who outlasted nearly two hours of delays to fix a pesky pothole during his 2010 victory, stopped at Blaney’s window to speak to the driver leading the

biggest race of his career.The racing was aggres-

sive at the drop of the green flag, and the first accident occurred on just the second lap, when Elliott Sadler ran into the back of Jimmie Johnson as they drafted around the track.

The contact sent John-son into the wall, and as the five-time NASCAR champion slid back down across the track, he was hit hard in the door by David Ragan. The accident col-lected six cars total, includ-ing defending Daytona 500 winner Trevor Bayne and Patrick.

“I’m just really, really bummed to start the season this way,” Johnson said. “To work as hard as everyone did at Hendrick Motor-sports to get this Lowe’s Chevrolet and to have it barely complete two-and-a-half miles of green flag racing is pretty sad. We’ll just go on and go to Phoenix and set our marks on win-ning that race.”

He may go to Phoe-nix without any points: NASCAR is expected to penalize crew chief Chad Knaus this week for fail-ing the first inspection of

SpeedWeeks. Knaus could be facing both a suspension and a loss of a points.

It took about an hour for Patrick’s Stewart-Haas Racing crew to get her back on the track, and she re-turned 62 laps behind the leader.

The race settled down after that, and the push for the $200,000 leader bonus at the halfway mark didn’t spark too much excitement. Two-time NASCAR cham-pion Terry Labonte had been running second and presumably in position to make a move for the cash, but he was spun by Marcos Ambrose.

“Awe, man! Who would turn the Ice Man around?” Dale Earnhardt Jr. shouted on his team radio.

After a brief caution, the leaders had a 10-lap sprint to the halfway point, and Martin Truex Jr. used a big push from Denny Hamlin to slide by Greg Biffle on the deciding lap. Although he was told over his team radio to “go get the other half,” history didn’t bode well for Truex: the last leader at the halfway point to win the Daytona 500 was Davey Allison in 1992.

LIONSFROM A7

Lewis County jumped to a 16-0 lead, including holding East Carter score-less the entire first quarter. The Lady Raiders didn’t score until 3:40 was left in the first half and missed their first 17 shots from the field.

“Obviously the start was huge,” East Carter coach Hager Easterling said. “But sometimes that’s what you get with a young team. We couldn’t get anything to fall early and I give Lewis County all the credit for playing a great game.”

The Lady Raiders had found the most success with their defense this sea-son, thriving on full-court pressure, but their inabil-ity to score against Lewis County kept them from setting it up. The Lady Lions helped force East Carter into nine first-half turnovers.

“Sometimes it seemed like we would have done just as well to bring the ball down and throw it out of bounds,” Easterling said.

Fite acknowledged the importance of keeping the Lady Raiders out of their press and was pleased with his team’s ability to turn the tables on them defen-sively.

“We always tell our kids that with teams that press, they’re going to be in your face all night if you let them score,” Fite said. “To-night we were able to con-trol that by getting after them defensively. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen as good a defensive effort as we put forward tonight.”

Offensively, the Lady Lions found success both inside and out. Jaycey Fite knocked down three 3-pointers on the night while Taylor Frye and Michelle Robersion each added one. Center Savan-nah Anderson countered

with 10 points in the paint, along with 11 rebounds, to share top scoring honors with Emily Frye’s 10.

“It was just a great team effort,” Jay Fite said. “This was an amazing crowd and we knew there would be some jitters. We missed a couple of easy shots that really would have had us rolling.”

Lewis County took a 25-8 lead into halftime as the Lady Raiders went just 3-of-26 from the field and Jay Fite acknowledged the message to his team was to keep playing and be ready for a East Carter run. Indeed the Lady Raid-ers looked to be heating up as the second half opened and they got back-to-back 3-pointers from Megan Sticklen and Abbey Dam-ron and pulled within 11 midway through the third.

But Easter Carter still could not settle into a rhythm and was never able to seriously threaten Lewis County’s lead and Jacey Fite hit her second 3 to push it back to 14 points with just over a minute left.

“We knew (East Carter) was going to score and we just didn’t want the girls to freak out if they made some shots or went on a run,” Jay Fite said. “They hadn’t been making many

but we knew they would. They got a few to fall but we were able to match them back and forth.”

The third quarter was also highlighted by an in-dividual accomplishment, as Anderson tallied her 1,000th career point and is just a freshman. She’s also closing in on 800 rebounds with 794.

“Those are staggering numbers,” Jay Fite said. “She was actually down on herself because she didn’t feel like she helped the team tonight. But she had no idea (about being close to 1,000). That just tells you about our kids. They really don’t care about their numbers. They truly are just concerned with the team concept.”

Jaycey Fite hit her final 3-pointer with 4:35 left in the game, making the score 42-37. The Lady Lions found themselves in the bonus soon thereafter and were able to close out the win.

Lewis County now moves on to Morehead State University’s John-son Arena for the second round, where it will face Boyd County in the second game Thursday night. The defending region cham-pion took down Fleming County by one point Mon-day and pulled out a close

win over the Lady Lions on February 13.

“We played them to the wire,” Jay Fite said. “It was tied with about two minutes left. We know it’s going to be tough. They’re the defending champs and they’re going to come in ready to play. But we’re not content with where we’re at, we’re going over to compete and keep our mis-sion alive.”

East Carter 0 8 16 9 — 33Lewis County 12 12 13 12 — 49EC: Steele 7, Sticklen 5, Gee 6, Mayo 9,

Pennington 2, Damron 3, Thornbury 1. Total: 33.

LC: T. Frye 7, E. Frye 10, Robersion 7, Liles 4, Anderson 10, Fite 9, Blake 2. Total: 49.

3-pointers: East Carter 4 (Mayo 2, Sticklen, Damron); Lewis County 5 (Fite 3, T. Frye, Robersion).

Records: East Carter 17-16, Lewis County 20-11.